A good start

For New Year’s this year we decided that it would be nice to observe a lit­tle fam­ily tra­di­tion. From Naomi’s side of the fam­ily, that is. From Naomi’s father’s side of the fam­ily, that is. Mixed mar­riages are so much fun.

We decided to do this tra­di­tional New Year’s Eve and Day thing so that when our baby is born, we’ll be able to present to him a smor­gas­bord of tra­di­tions from all sides of our fam­i­lies, with smor­gas­bord allud­ing to the food bit of tra­di­tion, not the Swedish bit, because we don’t have any Swedish in our blood except for the time I got a cou­ple of splin­ters in my hand from assem­bling an Ikea armchair.

On New Year’s Eve, it is tra­di­tional to eat toshikoshi soba and watch a music vari­ety show on NHK, but we caught only a bit of it at home before going over to Naomi’s mum’s and she doesn’t have NHK on cable, so we missed the bulk of it. Toshikoshi soba sym­bol­izes longevity, so we’re good. I don’t know what the tv show sym­bol­izes so I don’t know what we’ve missed.

Naomi pre­pared the soba with as many ice cubes as the fridge could make — which wasn’t enough — because we decided on cold soba instead of hot, and we man­aged to get the noo­dles down our throats before the clock struck twelve.

Dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies in dif­fer­ent regions observe these cus­toms dif­fer­ently — and we opted for a 7am start on New Year’s Day for the con­sum­ing of ozoni, a soup with really yummy toasted mochi.

We’re told that what you do on New Year’s sets the tone for the rest of the year. I went to work right after a big bowl of ozoni, and I’ll be sat­is­fied if that means I’ll be hav­ing work and food all year.

Many fam­i­lies cel­e­brate New Year’s over three days, so there’s still a bit of time to go eat and be happy. Mean­time, Naomi and I wish you a very happy oshogatsu.